Fosun Innovation and Wealth Investment Philosophy: Slow Half Step, Fast Half Beat, Master Product Balance

Ask AI · How does Fosun Chuangfu’s “slow half-step” strategy capture deterministic opportunities?

Author | Liu Hengtang

Editor | Guan Ju

Image source | Midjourney

By 2025, Fosun Chuangfu continues to strengthen its full-chain efforts in fundraising, investment, management, and exit, delivering an impressive performance. In recent years, Fosun Chuangfu has also ranked among the top in various investment research institutions’ lists.

As Fosun’s Co-Chief Investment Officer, Co-Chairman and CIO of Fosun Chuangfu, Zhong Yonggang summarized the company’s recent investment performance, jokingly attributing some success to luck. However, what sustains a steady and long-term investment firm is its consistent adherence to investment logic, unique investment strategies, and the strong empowerment from Fosun International’s ecosystem.

01坚持“慢半步、快半拍”

“In the past five or six years, the general direction of the tech track is easy to reach consensus on,” Zhong Yonggang said. However, Fosun Chuangfu also chooses to observe calmly in some highly popular projects. In an industry prone to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), this phased calmness, Zhong Yonggang admits, puts pressure on him.

For example, regarding general large models, Zhong Yonggang believes this is a capital-intensive industry and the foundation or entry point of AI, which is the biggest future opportunity. Major tech giants are willing to invest heavily in it, and any startup in this field must be prepared for a decade-long battle with these giants.

“In the internet era, everyone asks: what if Tencent has already done a vertical application? What if ByteDance has done it? What about Alibaba? This question still holds today,” Zhong Yonggang said.

He believes many emerging industries are initially pioneered by trailblazers, responsible for exploring models and trial-and-error. When market trends form, the teams that enter later may be better because the opportunity cost of leaving the original environment is higher for them.

“Chinese people love the motto from Records of the Grand Historian: ‘Are kings, marquises, and officials born of a certain class?’ So, any impressive achievement will attract many competitors, and in the end, several companies will share the success, especially in the B2B sector. Within a certain time window, there will be multiple options. Historically, the chaos during dynastic transitions shows that the last to laugh are not the first to rise,” Zhong Yonggang said.

Fosun Chuangfu’s “slow half-step, fast half-pulse” investment philosophy is based on this observation and reflection.

“Our past successful cases were in tracks that just ignited; we didn’t invest early, but by the end, we invested and did quite well,” Zhong Yonggang said. Many star companies at Series B or C “are not necessarily the best.”

The “fast half-pulse” means acting quickly. As long as a project aligns with Fosun Chuangfu’s investment values, valuation, and return multiples, Fosun Chuangfu will go for it.

“As long as you act fast enough in this ‘half-pulse,’ it’s still timely. No industry’s one-year gap can make others disappear completely. If it really happens, then accept it. Adjusting investment frameworks for low-probability miracles might backfire,” Zhong Yonggang said. Companies like Lisan Technology, Miguo Intelligence, QiaoJie Data, and Inx are all “snatched” based on this “fast half-pulse” approach.

“When I invest, they already have clear downstream markets, recognized technology, and products,” Zhong Yonggang said. “When that certainty appears, we rush in faster than anyone else.”

02 Balancing Poetic Dreams and Product Reality

Regarding investment stages, Zhong Yonggang uses a metaphor: Fosun Chuangfu’s investment stage is “dumbbell-shaped.”

Fosun Chuangfu prefers to invest in early-stage VC and pre-IPO companies, each accounting for 40%, with the remaining 20% allocated to mid-growth companies.

“The first half, VC investments, pursue poetry and distant dreams; the second half is for balancing financial products,” Zhong Yonggang explained. “When doing an IPO, we aim for the final stretch. Whether it earns double or ten times, we can’t control that, but what we seek is certainty. We want to pursue long-term, idealistic VC, especially in current scientific research transformation and early incubation acceleration. But funds are financial products, and financial products focus on DPI (Distributions to Paid-In).”

Zhong Yonggang believes that the reason for fewer investments in mid-stage companies is because these are the most challenging and uncertain.

“Growth-stage companies have some certainty, but valuations are high. As they go down, you can’t rely solely on technology concepts and validation; you need real order revenue to verify financial models,” he said. “A company’s revenue under 50 million yuan can be driven by founders’ personal networks, but to grow from 50 million to 500 million, a strong sales team is essential. How to divide roles, set KPIs, implement ideas, and manage the relationship between customized and non-customized products—all these need to be solved. The same technology, a company with 500 million in revenue is entirely different from one with 50 million.”

From his observations, most Chinese tech companies, including B2B and supply chain firms, are stuck at this stage, with many companies stagnating for five or six years. “It’s not that revenue isn’t growing, but they can’t meet the market’s valuation expectations. That’s why we are cautious about companies at this stage.”

Recently, two companies in this middle stage excited Zhong Yonggang.

One is a GPU company, Lisan Technology, a project invested in by Dongxin Co., a listed company in A-shares. The company develops full-stack self-developed graphics rendering chips. “In this market, only three companies worldwide can do full-stack self-developed graphics rendering, and China only has them,” Zhong Yonggang said. “Graphics rendering has a large enough market, so even if the valuation looks high when we invest, we see the company’s technical focus, the huge market certainty, and order capacity, and we’re happy to jump in. We believe that after Lisan starts shipping in spring this year, its outstanding capabilities in graphics rendering and AI-adapted rendering will make it the most dazzling GPU company in China’s capital market.”

Regarding valuation standards for VC targets, Zhong Yonggang has a rough benchmark: 300 million RMB. A large proportion of Fosun Chuangfu’s VC projects are around this valuation.

Why 300 million?

“Because most VC projects don’t reach IPO. The IPO window has been active recently, but no one knows when the next bottleneck will occur. Even in the US, most VC exits are via M&A. In China’s A-share market, about 80% of acquisition targets are valued below 1 billion. Investing at 300 million RMB for a 1 billion valuation can yield threefold returns; at 500 million, it’s a good deal. Higher than that, it’s mainly earning interest. Early-stage VC bears higher risks and should pursue larger multiples. We also have rich experience in M&A—buying or selling,” Zhong Yonggang said.

Even for valuations below 300 million, Fosun Chuangfu strives to find “certainty” in investments. “The company doesn’t necessarily need profits, but it must have products, technology, and validation.”

In the field of embodied intelligence, several supply chain companies Fosun Chuangfu invested in are “certain” targets. Fosun Chuangfu invested in Robot Brain, Shenzhen QiaoJie Data, with a valuation below 1 billion; Nanjing Inx, which makes robot joints, claimed to be “the Apple of joints,” with a valuation over 300 million at the time of investment. Also, among the top two companies in six-dimensional force sensors, one is Blue Dot Touch, with Fosun Chuangfu entering at a 300 million valuation. Notably, these companies quickly reached profitability. Zhong Yonggang explained that the reason for investing in these projects is that the technologies of Robot Brain, joints, and others are converging.

However, he believes that embodied intelligent dexterous hands and brains have not yet converged. “If there’s no convergence, I can afford to be a half-step slow. I don’t like to gamble on things that are uncertain.”

Of course, as consensus around AI and embodied tracks grows, more early star projects with valuations well above 300 million before Series A are emerging. How does Fosun Chuangfu view this?

“The methodology remains unchanged; only the numbers need adjustment. For industries expected to reach hundreds of trillions in total market size over the next decade, like AI, hundreds of companies with market caps of over 100 billion and dozens over 1 trillion may emerge. This means large-scale M&A at the hundred-billion level is very possible, as proven during the peak of mobile internet. For early-stage VC in such tracks, we can accept valuations above 3 billion,” Zhong Yonggang said.

03 Leveraging Ecosystems to Empower Portfolio Companies

“Before 2018, our life was simpler. TMT companies were mainly in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, with few in Shanghai. Business trips were infrequent, and staying in Beijing as a sitting merchant was enough. Playing around with the internet, if we liked an app, we’d chat with the founder and invest—like a fairy-tale life,” Zhong Yonggang said. But after 2018, things changed.

Post-2018, hard tech entrepreneurship surged, and at least ten Chinese cities became very active in sci-tech innovation. Zhong Yonggang said that Shanghai alone radiates to surrounding areas like Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Hefei, Ningbo, Shaoxing. To achieve this coverage, regional teams are needed, and with regional teams, a certain fund scale is required.

“We don’t pursue large-scale funds; of course, if opportunities arise, we won’t miss them, but we don’t pursue it deliberately,” Zhong Yonggang said. “Size is the enemy of fund returns. Fosun Chuangfu places some people in key regional economic zones to ensure local project coverage.”

Fosun Chuangfu’s fund size isn’t large—each fund is about 1 billion RMB. Combined with industry funds co-established with Fosun subsidiaries, the entire fund group has about seven or eight funds, totaling 7-8 billion RMB. Since shifting in 2018–2019, a new wave of funds has formed, with 2-3 billion RMB added annually, maintaining a dynamic balance between new and exited funds.

Besides flagship funds, Fosun Chuangfu manages multiple industry funds, each collaborating with Fosun’s listed companies. The focus and scope of investments are aligned with Fosun’s strategic considerations.

Currently, Fosun Chuangfu employs over forty full-time investment professionals. Zhong Yonggang estimates that, including teams from Fosun’s various industry companies, the total number of investors exceeds seventy. He roughly calculates that each year, over 300 projects are interviewed on-site, totaling over 10,000 projects. Including research on projects without interviews, the number could be multiplied by ten. In theory, the good projects in this market—both on land and at sea—should be well covered.

Today, Fosun Chuangfu’s average project investment is about 30 million RMB, with around 30 investments annually, totaling roughly 1 billion RMB.

Zhong Yonggang emphasizes that all these strategies and actions serve a fundamental premise: continuously generating profits for the management company.

“A company, especially a subsidiary within a platform company, must first do well itself to empower the parent. Burning oneself to empower others is not sustainable. Fosun Chuangfu is first and foremost a company whose main business is investment. As a company, it must pursue profits. If something doesn’t create value for the management company, I won’t do it,” Zhong Yonggang said.

Since its inception, Fosun Chuangfu has adopted an analysis method called “54321,” which Zhong Yonggang said was established early on by founder and Chairman Tang Bin.

The “5” means that as an investor, you should stay at least 5 days in a target company to conduct research and understanding.

The “4” indicates interviewing at least four employees at different levels beyond the boss.

The “3” and “2” refer to interviewing at least three supply chain companies and two competitors.

The final “1” is to produce a report and a complete interview record.

“So, actually, one advantage of our industry is that the longer we do it, the more connections we accumulate, and the less likely we are to be deceived,” Zhong Yonggang said.

Why does Fosun want to operate a fund management platform like Fosun Chuangfu?

“I think it’s because the investment platform is valuable to the group’s business. It’s like a scout, seeing the best companies,” Zhong Yonggang explained. “First, many of the companies Fosun invests in are market leaders, and the group can learn a lot from them; second, if these companies interact with Fosun in scenarios, it can generate significant business value; third, it allows for learning and exchange in business models.”

Zhong Yonggang believes Fosun Chuangfu is not a strict CVC (Corporate Venture Capital). They call it EVC—Ecological Venture Capital.

“Fosun Chuangfu’s investment map covers new materials, semiconductors, consumer sectors, and more. Each industry has its own CVC, creating a multiplicative effect, and we also have an ecosystem,” Zhong Yonggang said. “Relying on these ecosystems, Fosun can empower the invested companies and even incubate many projects. This is a unique advantage of Fosun Chuangfu as an EVC.”

This article is an original by CYZone. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. If reproduction is needed or if you have questions, please contact editor@cyzone.cn.